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I asked James Hinchcliffe the other day what he thought about the new NASCAR franchise/charter system and he said it worked in just about every other big-league sport and he didn't see any reason why it wouldn't work there.

I'm not so sure. Although they might have the occasional disagreement, people who hold franchises in the NHL, NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball all get along with each other because they are in business together. Maybe they squabble every now and again (although I really don't think so) but they keep it private.

Auto racing? You've got to be kidding. Auto racing people are too competitive to ever really get along. The teams in Formula One are constantly griping about something, usually money. Indy car racing has been ripped apart how many times because the owners couldn’t get along with each other? The long knives are always out. NASCAR worked until now because the France family owned the business as well as many of the tracks and if you wanted to race you had to do it their way. With the franchise system, that is not the case any more.

Two years ago, or so, the most powerful team owners in NASCAR announced they had formed a working group (Race Team Alliance) to investigate how they could better be involved in France family decisions on racing rules, cost containment, race scheduling and so-on. That Brian France didn't announce that they were all suspended surprised me at the time and still surprises me. By agreeing to work with this group, France and NASCAR opened the door to the henhouse. Now the foxes are all inside and it's only a matter of time before feathers start flying and things start falling apart.

It's already had a negative effect on the racing. The traditional NASCAR Sprint Cup field of 43 has been cut to 40 and 36 spots are reserved for franchised teams. Besides an increase in purse money to split up (only 40 cars have to be paid instead of 43), there is now no danger at all of — say — Danica Patrick or Eric Almirola missing a race because they had an off day and didn’t qualify well. They drive for teams that have a franchise and they get to race, regardless of what happens.

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Last night, they ran the two qualifying races for Sunday's Daytona 500. Know how many spots were up for grabs? Two. Exactly. Two. Once upon a time, when NASCAR stock car racing was an open competition sport, everything other than pole and outside pole was on the line. Not any more. They might have to race for starting positions but there’s no danger of any of them actually missing the show. Kinda takes the excitement out of it, doesn’t it?

And what about the cheaters and cheating that goes on? Auto racing is full of people looking for an edge. Granted, it’s a grey area but before the franchise system, drivers and teams were at the mercy of NASCAR if they were caught. Now, I’m not so sure.

Franchises are white-collar. Stock car racing remains a blue-collar sport. Once you create a disconnect, you’re asking for trouble. This is a disconnect.

I am not alone in my thinking. I get phone calls from NASCAR fans who are not happy. It reminds me of when CART went from No. 1 in North America to the cellar because the owners opted to put offshore ride-buyers in their cars instead of homegrown talent like Jeff Gordon. It was — like this — a disconnect.

So, remember the date of this announcement: Feb. 9, 2016. Mark it on your calendar. It will be the day the music died.

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Hey, be sure to pick up a Saturday Star to read Clare Dear’s excellent pre-season NASCAR rundown on the cover of the Wheels section. It will also be online at thestar.com/autos . An automotive writer from London, Ont., Dear is well-connected and knows his stuff. And the Daytona 500 pre-race show will be on TSN Sunday at noon with the race program itself starting at 1 p.m. The XFinity Series race can be seen Saturday on TSN5 at 3:30. For those of us lucky enough to get FOX Sports Racing (Rogers and Cogeco customers), the first Camping World Series truck race of the season will go tonight (Friday) at 7:30 p.m. Keep your eye out for Cameron Hayley of Calgary, who is starting his second season with ThorSport Racing. Now, moving right along . . .

Formula One will most likely have some sort of driver cockpit protection in place by the time 2017 rolls around. Can IndyCar be far behind? Drivers are quietly saying behind the scenes that the time has come to do something to protect drivers if cars get upside down or foreign objects fly into the cockpit. Dan Wheldon and Justin Wilson died because of a lack of this kind of protection. Hinchcliffe was hit in the helmet during the Grand Prix of Indianapolis in 2014, a blow that knocked him out momentarily (he recovered his senses before his car crashed but it was a close call). There might be some foot-dragging but the momentum is there and it will happen sooner rather than later. And it’s about time.

A week ago, Brian Herta was talking about running a second car in the Indianapolis 500. Thursday, he took his one car and little (if any) money and joined forces with Andretti Autosport for the 2016 Verizon IndyCar Series season. Andretti didn’t have the money for a fourth car and Herta didn’t have quite enough for one, despite his optimism. This follows by a couple of weeks Wink Hartman’s decision to pull out of his partnership with Sarah Fisher, which deep-sixed her one-car and sometimes two-car team (Honda Indy Toronto last June). Once again, with the exception of Roger Penske and Chip Ganassi and maybe Andretti, pretty much everybody else in the IndyCar series is hanging on by a thread.

Of course, auto racing being a commercial sport and the economy not exactly running on all eight cylinders at the moment, other forms of the sport are not all that healthy either. In F1, after you get past Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull/Toro Rosso and — maybe — McLaren, things are not all that rosy there, for sure. And NASCAR? Why do you think all those owners were so keen on the franchise idea? Now, on top of everything else, they get to split up a lot of the money that the Frances once had all to themselves.

Finally, the Mopar Canadian National Superbike Championship will be televised on TSN this year. Each of the seven rounds will be shown in a half-hour episode and each episode will consist of the Pro Superbike feature race, along with support event highlights. The programs will be shown as early as the weekend following each national round. “It is a real treat to be able to bring the excitement of Canadian motorcycle road racing to TSN,” said CSBK Executive Producer Michael Taylor of Multiple Media Entertainment. “This opportunity will bring our sport to a wider viewing audience and should create new fans of the series, while at the same time making the championship even more accessible to our existing fan base.” Long-time voice of the motorcycle series Frank Wood will handle the race call on the TSN broadcasts. Senior Producer and Editor Judah Purcell, also a video veteran of the series, will lead the on-site team. On-site production will come from Professional Motorsports Productions, broadcaster of the series for the past 21 seasons. Multi-time national champion Jordan Szoke of Brantford will once again race with No. 1 on his bike after regaining the crown from Jodi Christie of Keene, Ont., who won the title in 2014.

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